There is a critical need for highly integrated wafer-level optical interconnections in microelectronics at the die-to-module/board level. Input/output (I/O) interconnections between die and board have traditionally been provided by metallic conductors. Electrical interconnects, however, have inherent limitations which include high noise, high drive powers, impedance matching requirements, tradeoff between data rate and distance, insufficient densities/data rates, and expensive redesign. Optical interconnects, on the other hand, have the potential for low noise, low drive power, high density, high data rates, simplified design and redesign. Due to the above performance limitations of electrical interconnects, not only have optical interconnects replaced electrical interconnects for long distance communications, but optical interconnects are also being developed for chip-to-chip I/O interconnections. Micro-optical devices and interconnects can potentially greatly enhance the performance of a micro-system by leveraging high-bandwidth, low-latency, cross-talk-resilient, and low-power communication networks. The projected off-chip communication speed for some chip I/O's is as high as 56.843 GHz at the 18-nm technology node. The introduction of optical I/O interconnection adds new constraints and new problems. Among these is the ability to fabricate prototype optically interconnected micro-systems and limited-production, application-specific, optically interconnected micro-systems.